Tricks of Light and Feathers, The Steller's Jay

 'BR' of Yosemite NP

Birdgirrl

   The Steller's Jay is the boisterous bird that  hops right across your picnic table to snatch a pretzel or peanut. They are often in campgrounds making a racket in trees surrounding your tent in oak/pine and coniferous woodlands. It has a long black crest (mohawk) and a garrulous, bold nature. You may find one of its feathers on the trails, and it takes some restraint to leave it there. These attractive and faintly black-striped feathers contain no blue pigmentation! Their blue is an optical effect which is due to "structural coloration." "There is no blue pigment in bird feathers- instead, the color results from the way light interacts with nanoscale bubbles in the feather barbs" (Schmoker, Bill). Jays belong to the Corvidae family and are grouped along with songbirds, but not for their singing ability, because they sound like squawkers and screechers. You won't have to tiptoe or creep around to see a Steller's Jay because he or she will not shy away. They may pick a fight with you if you loiter around their nests. I have had my hair messed up by another species in this family, the Western Scrub-Jay. If you can't get enough on avian coloration...

National Geographic Bird Coloration  by Geoffrey Edward Hill

http://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/Stellers-Jay-Coloration.htm

White Pelicans: Aerial Ballet

John Young

http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00A/00AyY1-21650384.JPG

and, view:
http://www.monolake.org/today/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/amwp_21.jpg

   White Pelicans are overwintering along the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. They are the second largest bird of North America with their 9' wingspans, longer than any of our tallest basketball players! Most people recognize them as the bird with the long, flat orange bill and flexible pouch attached to the lower mandible. At first glance from afar, you might mistake a flock of pelicans for gulls with their flashing white forms, but look again through a pair of binoculars. There is nothing quite like their slow, "ponderous," quiet, dramatic presence high above. They are a rewarding sight with their wings' black edging, their mighty downstrokes, and their graceful leisurely soaring. They are sky dancers flowing as one body in a "unified wheeling"(http://birds.audubon.org/). They make the elitest Swan Lake Corps de Ballet look like a troupe of stumblers. This is a bird both "improbable" or "semi-comical" in its dimensions who, nevertheless, achieves an overall effect of grace and power. We, a stray assortment of birders, saw some 70 of them rising on thermal air columns from the vantage point of Ulistac Natural Area a few miles inland from Don Edwards Baylands Trail National Wildlife Refuge (http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Don_Edwards_San_Francisco_Bay/map.html.) Each of us was silent and transfixed for a few breaths. I live on the Pacific Flyway, hooray! Take a walk anywhere on the SF Baylands Trail system in the South Bay to look at waterbirds of all shapes, colors, sizes, and squawks.